ERASE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does erase mean? 

• ERASE (verb)
  The verb ERASE has 3 senses:

1. remove from memory or existence

2. remove by or as if by rubbing or erasing

3. wipe out digitally or magnetically recorded information

  Familiarity information: ERASE used as a verb is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ERASE (verb)

Present simple: I / you / we / they erase    ... he / she / it erases   
Past simple: erased   
Past participle: erased   
-ing form: erasing   

Sense 1

Meaning:

Remove from memory or existence

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Synonyms:

erase; wipe out

Context example:

The Turks erased the Armenians in 1915

Hypernyms (to "erase" is one way to...):

kill (cause to die; put to death, usually intentionally or knowingly)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something

Derivation:

erasure (deletion by an act of expunging or erasing)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Remove by or as if by rubbing or erasing

Classified under:

Verbs of touching, hitting, tying, digging

Synonyms:

efface; erase; rub out; score out; wipe off

Context example:

Please erase the formula on the blackboard--it is wrong!

Hypernyms (to "erase" is one way to...):

cancel; delete (remove or make invisible)

"Erase" entails doing...:

rub (move over something with pressure)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "erase"):

sponge (erase with a sponge; as of words on a blackboard)

cut out; scratch out (strike or cancel by or as if by rubbing or crossing out)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s something

Derivation:

eraser (an implement used to erase something)

erasure (deletion by an act of expunging or erasing)

erasure (a surface area where something has been erased)

erasure (a correction made by erasing)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Wipe out digitally or magnetically recorded information

Classified under:

Verbs of telling, asking, ordering, singing

Synonyms:

delete; erase

Context example:

Who erased the files from my hard disk?

Hypernyms (to "erase" is one way to...):

take away; take out (take out or remove)

Domain category:

recording; transcription (the act of making a record (especially an audio record))

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "erase"):

demagnetise; demagnetize (erase (a magnetic storage device))

Sentence frame:

Somebody ----s something

Antonym:

record (register electronically)

Derivation:

eraser (an implement used to erase something)

 Context examples 

A type of read only memory device that can be written to after manufacture, erased, and reused.

(Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory Device Component, NCI Thesaurus)

“A jambe gules erased,” said Sir Nigel, shaking his head solemnly.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

In a second study, a team led by Dr. Elizabeth Phelps (NYU) set out to see if extinction training could similarly erase a fear in people.

(How Our Memory Works, NIH, US)

Elimination, especially by blotting out, cutting out, or erasing.

(Deletion, NCI Thesaurus)

Each day, pursuing him and crying defiance at him, the lesson of the previous night was erased, and that night would have to be learned over again, to be as immediately forgotten.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

While earnestly wishing to erase from his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that tenacious surface another and far deeper impression, I had burnt it in.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I observe among you some lines of an institution, which, in its original, might have been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions.

(Gulliver's Travels into several remote nations of the world, by Jonathan Swift)

Like the rest of Pluto, this region would presumably have been pummeled by space debris for billions of years and would have once been heavily cratered — unless recent activity had given the region a facelift, erasing those pockmarks.

(The Icy Mountains of Pluto, NASA)

90 percent of purchase tickets and receipts, those whose ink is erased after some time because they are made of ‘thermal paper’, contain bisphenol A (BPA), a well‑known endocrine disruptor that alters hormonal balance in people exposed to it, and it leads to hormonal diseases such as genitourinary malformations, infertility, obesity and cancer in hormone‑dependent organs (such as breast cancer).

(Purchase receipts with easily erasable ink contain cancer- and infertility inducing substances, University of Granada)

Fear of the stimulus was erased only in rats trained within a 6-hour reconsolidation window after re-exposure to the feared tone.

(How Our Memory Works, NIH, US)